Research & Discoveries
Primary Areas of Interest
Pseudotachylyte veins in the Deep Canyon area, Santa Rosa Mountains, California showing reservoir (top) and tension gashes (bottom). The maroon color arises from supergene alteration of magnetite into hematite.
Carbonate ultracataclasite layer formed by the sliding of allochton masses of Ordovician Bighorn Dolomite on other carbonates resulting in decarbonation with massive production of CO2 during slide at velocity up to 100 m/s.
White Mountain, Wyoming.
Mantle xenolith cluster in the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, Arizona showing both rounded and angular chunks of the subcontinental lithospheric mantle (spinel-lherzolite) hosted in a basalt (basanite).
International Ocean Discovery Program split cores recovered during sea-going Expedition 368 (South China Sea) showing red and green colors produced by reducing fluids that percolated through fractures and high permeability intervals resulting in pervasive remagnetization of sediments.
Magmatic layering of chromitite and anorthosite at the Dwars River National Monument, Bushveld Layered Complex, South Africa. The chromitite layers are mined for Cr and PGEs all around the complex (but not at this protected site).
Tectonic layering in harzburgites from the Humboldt corridor high deformation shear zone in New Caledonia (East of Australia). The layering in the mantle results from plastic deformation during ascent at an oceanic ridge.
Zuma Rock, Niger State, Nigeria is a large inselberg of Neoproterozoic granite emplaced during transpressional tectonics
Theoretical mixing model of two components of magnetic fabric with a normal and inverse symmetry resulting in non-linear variations of magnetic shape parameter and degree of magnetic anisotropy.
Corsica, an island south of France, hosts one of the most extensive granitic batholiths in Europe, formed by coalescence of three major intrusive suites between ~340 and 250 Ma